Fraud & Scams
Financial fraud, phishing, identity theft, scam alerts, data breaches, and how to protect yourself and your accounts.
Latest in Fraud & Scams
People on the Do Not Call list who got O’Reilly Auto Parts texts can claim up to $22 by September 28
Consumers whose phone numbers sat on the National Do Not Call Registry and who received unwanted text messages from O’Reilly Auto Parts can file a...
Grubhub customers holding FTC refund checks from August have 90 days to cash them
The Federal Trade Commission mailed more than $23.8 million in refund checks and PayPal payments to 640,038 Grubhub drivers and diners on August 12, working...
The FTC says Humboldt’s scam-linked merchants had chargebacks nearly 10 times the excessive-rate threshold
The Federal Trade Commission says shell merchants processed by Humboldt Merchant Services typically generated chargebacks at rates almost 10 times higher than what Mastercard and...
A payment processor will pay $12 million after the FTC said it enabled billing scams
Payment processor Humboldt Merchant Services will pay $12 million and accept a permanent ban on processing payments for certain high-risk merchants to settle Federal Trade...
A $7.3 million mortgage-fraud case had already triggered more than $493,000 in FHA insurance claims
Federal prosecutors in Texas say an alleged $7.3 million mortgage-fraud scheme had already cost the Federal Housing Administration more than $493,000 before any of the...
Four people face charges in a $7.3 million mortgage-fraud case involving FHA and VA loans
A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas has indicted four people accused of running a multi-year mortgage-fraud scheme that pushed more than...
Romance scammers used fake identities and urgent money requests to target older Americans
Scammers working with a Nigerian money launderer used fake social media identities to court older Americans, convinced them they had a future together, and then...
A romance-and-sextortion network took more than $2.5 million from about 150 Americans
A Nigerian national who helped run sextortion and romance scams against roughly 150 Americans made more than $2.5 million from the schemes, the Justice Department...
Justice says a September plea follows a 2025 seizure of more than $2.1 million from an elderly-fraud network
Federal prosecutors in California secured a guilty plea on Sept. 14 from Juliet Mora, an organizer of a fraud network that posed as attorneys and...
Justice says a cross-border scheme stole more than $36 million from 400 mostly elderly Americans
A transnational fraud ring that posed as lawyers stole more than $36 million from more than 400 Americans, most of them elderly, by promising restitution...
Federal refund checks stop being good 90 days after they are issued
Missing the 90-day cash-by window on a Federal Trade Commission settlement check can mean losing the money entirely, according to the deadline printed on the...
The consumer bureau is still sending money on 28 enforcement cases
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lists 28 enforcement cases as still active on its payments-by-case tracker, spanning a student-loan servicer, several debt-relief and credit-repair operators,...
The FTC has called a September 29 roundtable on scams aimed at older adults
The Federal Trade Commission has called a public roundtable for September 29, 2026, aimed squarely at the scams that spike every fall around Medicare and...
The Federal Trade Commission uses only five companies to send refunds, and none of them asks for a fee
Five companies handle every refund the Federal Trade Commission sends out on behalf of consumers who lost money to a company the agency has sued,...
Amway agreed to the largest multilevel-marketing settlement the Federal Trade Commission has obtained
A $225 million settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Amway Corp. is now the largest monetary recovery the agency has obtained against a multilevel...
A new Social Security scam asks to verify employment records rather than threatening arrest
The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General warned on August 31 that a new imposter script is circulating among callers who claim to...
A Ponzi manager who spent investors’ millions on private jets drew 11 years and a $31.35 million bill
A federal judge in St. Louis sentenced a Texas investment manager to 11 years in prison this week for running a Ponzi scheme that took...
On Q data-breach customers can file for up to $5,000, but the claim deadline is October 28
On Q Financial, an Arizona-based mortgage lender, has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over a data breach that exposed customers’...
Four people were charged in Texas schemes that drained a 79-year-old’s home-sale money
A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas indicted four people in two related fraud cases connected to unlicensed boarding homes for elderly...
A Texas investment CEO drew 11 years for a Ponzi scheme that snared Travis Kelce
A federal judge in the Eastern District of Missouri sentenced Siddharth Jawahar, the 38-year-old founder of Texas-registered investment firm Swiftarc Capital, to 11 years in...